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Research has shown that many factors influence the transfer process in L3 acquisition (e.g., language distance, L2-status, proficiency in the L2/L3). Regarding the L2/L3 acquisition of aspect, a lot of research on the influence of the L1 has been conducted; however, to date, only a very limited amount of studies has analysed the influence an L2 exerts on the acquisition of aspect in an L3. The present study, therefore, focuses on L3 acquisition of perfective/imperfective aspect. We investigated 109 German-speaking learners of L3 Spanish with previous linguistic L2 knowledge in English. Data were elicited by means of a language background questionnaire, a c-test for overall proficiency measures in the L3, an oral retelling of two picture-based narratives, and two semantic interpretation tasks to measure the participants’ knowledge of aspect in the L2 and the L3 (i.e., analytic proficiency). The findings provide empirical evidence that L2 English positively influences the acquisition of aspect in L3 Spanish if structural similarities between the L2 and the L3 exist. However, positive L2 transfer seems to depend on L2 and L3 proficiency levels.

The present study examines the influence of L2 English on the acquisition of perfective and imperfective aspect in L3 Spanish among German-speaking learners. We will argue that English will be activated as the default transfer source due to principles of acquisition, which are similar for both the L2 and the L3, and because of structural similarities between both languages. The analysis is based on data from 36 German-speaking learners with varying levels of knowledge of aspect in English, their L2, and learning Spanish. For data elicitation, two semantic interpretation tasks were used. The findings show that aspectual knowledge in L2 English affects the acquisition of L3 Spanish past tenses. However, the positive effect is not comprehensive, but rather, restricted to certain semantic contexts (e.g., past/perfective contexts). The discussion points to the possible effects of oversimplified one-to-one-mappings of form and meaning between L2 English and L3 Spanish.

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